Sunday, 2 December 2007

Manga Sunday! ‘Alice on Deadlines’ – Shiro Ihara (Yen Press)

When I reviewed ‘With the Light’, a few weeks ago, I made a passing comment about how not all Manga is about young girls with really long legs and large breasts. I still think this is true but (in what looks like an attempt to redress this balance) I’ve since been sent a Manga book that is entirely about young ‘over-endowed’ ladies and what they get up to…As a punishment for reading ‘naughty magazines’ on the job, the shinagami (sort of like a grim reaper) Lapan is ordered to go to the Human Realm (in the body of a skeleton) to retrieve a wandering spirit. However; there’s a slip up and he ends up in the body of Alice, a student at an all girls school (she ends up trapped in the body of a skeleton). Lapan has a job to do but the lecherous shinagami also finds himself being able to act out some particularly lewd fantasies while Alice tries to limit the damage…‘Alice on Deadlines’ is very much a cross between the ‘Carry On’ films and Benny Hill. There’s a lot of smutty situational comedy and sequences where Alice and Lapan are chased by buxom schoolgirls. This could get boring very quickly so luckily there’s also the story of the ‘wandering cannibal spirit’ to get into plus some events which are clearly there to have something ready for book two.This is a strange one to call, there was enough there to make me read the whole way through but not enough there to keep me hooked as it were. The concept behind Alice and Lapin swapping bodies was good but the ramifications were perhaps a little too lightweight to last a whole book. Hopefully the supernatural element will take precedence as the series progresses, which could be interesting. I think there’s probably enough there to make me give it one more chance and see where it goes.